For Episode 253 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Sophia Fairweather, the founder of Key Angels, and the youngest entrepreneur we’ve had the pleasure of chatting to for our Amplify Your Business podcast. Key Angels aims to support both entrepreneurship and home-ownership in the youth. Key Angels' core model involves living in one unit of a fourplex and having the income from the other three units cover expenses, effectively offering financial stability while allowing pursuit of entrepreneurial goals. This approach enables young entrepreneurs to dedicate themselves fully to their ventures without the added pressure of part-time jobs or immediate financial needs. The concept of "angels" is derived from traditional investment angels, however, it describes individuals who provide qualifying credit scores, ensuring access and stability rather than financial investment. There are many things that Sophia has learned along the way in her seven years of entrepreneurship, however, the one significant aspect that stands out to her is the importance of attending events: both for networking and for improving your communication skills. Particularly improving your ability to educate people about your product or service. 

To learn more, visit https://key-angels.com/. 

00:00 - Intro

01:38 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

09:01 - How old are you and when did you begin your entrepreneurial journey?

16:37 - How do you cope with the frustration of being an entrepreneur at such a young age (going against your peers, dealing with age-related roadblocks)?

18:53 - Tell us more about your business, Key Angels.

24:38 - Can you tell us more about the market itself?

26:50 - What excites you about entrepreneurship? Why did you begin this journey?

30:55 - How can we establish a stronger ecosystem and movement centered around youth and entrepreneurship?  

For Episode 253 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Pierce Krol, the founder and CEO of Insurely Inc, who generously shared his 18 years of entrepreneurial experience. He emphasized three key lessons: embracing failure, continuous learning, and resilience. Insurely, his digital insurance brokerage, evolved from his frustration with the insurance industry. He recognized that traditional insurance processes were slow - often lacking user-friendliness. Pierce's vision was to digitize the insurance experience and provide his customers with a seamless, efficient, and user-friendly platform. Pierce pivoted from his previous bricks-and-mortar insurance business to start Insurely, driven by this need for technological advancement. He values surrounding himself with business mentors and has a long-standing business coach who helps him navigate personal and professional challenges. Pierce believes in betting on oneself and emphasizes self-care and spirituality as he continues his entrepreneurial journey. 

00:00 - Intro

01:03 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

07:47 - What problem is your company solving?

10:06 - What was your inspiration for starting this company?

13:14 - How did find the courage to embrace entrepreneurship?

16:12 - What role does an advisory board play in your development as an entrepreneur?

21:32 - What are your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur?

24:33 - What is easier for you now that you’re further along in your entrepreneurial journey?  

28:35 - What obstacles are you anticipating and how do you plan to overcome them?

33:23 - What is the most expensive lesson you’ve had to learn as an entrepreneur?

36:19 - If you could write a letter to your younger self, what advice would you give?

40:06 - What was happening internally to inspire that advice?

For Episode 252 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Kim Lowert who is the Founder and CEO of a company reshaping the online shopping experience: Appstract. Kim founded his eCommerce consultancy after observing that online shopping hasn’t evolved much in the past 15 to 20 years - remaining static like a catalog. Appstract’s focus has primarily been on optimizing the checkout process, however, they recognized a challenge in that shopping is naturally social. Their objective is to merge the social aspects of shopping with the online store experience, making it more engaging, like shopping with friends in a physical store. Kim has undeniably picked up some invaluable knowledge throughout his experience as an entrepreneur: the value of hard work and learning new skills, being able to pivot your mindset, and hiring the right people. Uncover this knowledge with us in today’s episode of the Amplify Your Business Podcast, as well as how Appstract's adaptable business model is currently being tested with a monthly subscription and consumption fee for their social shopping service. 

00:00 - Intro

01:23 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

02:35 - What problem is your company solving?

08:29 - How are you working on the business model side of things?

10:45 - What are the advantages of a product-based model over a consultancy model?

15:42 - How have you leveraged your transferable skills to make starting this business with a SaaS model easier?

20:45 - What big challenges are you expecting in the next year or two?

26:08 - How are you approaching marketing with Appstract?   

For Episode 251 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by John MacInnes, the founder of Earthware. In this episode, John shares invaluable insights from his lifelong entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing perseverance, financial acumen, and adaptability. Earthware is transforming single-use containers through a circular strategy, catalyzing a positive change in responsible consumption and the eco-friendly food sector. By tackling waste and diverting millions from landfills and streets, they’re reshaping the narrative for a greener future. Discover Earthware’s seamless system that incentivizes consumers and restaurants to return and reuse containers, driving an eco-conscious shift. Tune in to explore how Earthware is reshaping sustainable practices in the food industry and envisioning a greener tomorrow for everyone.

00:00 - Intro

00:59 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

08:18 - What problem is your company solving?

11:28 - How did Earthware’s business model evolve?

16:43 - How did you overcome obstacles with Earthware?

20:55 - How has your previous entrepreneurial experience made managing Earthware easier?

23:42 - What motivates your cycle of starting and transitioning between businesses?

25:41 - What surprised you in this venture?  

30:03 - What distinguishes founders from CEOs?

33:40 - What would you write in a letter to your younger self? 

For Episode 250 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Jay Schiff, the co-founder and CEO of Addinex Technologies. Addinex Technologies is cost-effectively and brilliantly solving a massive problem: the growing opioid crisis, which saw overdose deaths surpassing 100,000 for the first time, with over 80% of these deaths attributed to opioids. Jay’s company’s primary focus lies in preventing opioid misuse, addiction, and overdose while also assisting those with Opioid Use Disorder. Join us as we discuss everything, from Addinex’s dispensing system to the importance of being flexible and persistent as an entrepreneur to the challenges that Jay has faced in starting his own business as well as how they’ve overcome those challenges. 

00:00 - Intro

00:39 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

04:39 - What problem is your company solving?

08:40 - What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

12:08 - What made you pivot from your career to entrepreneurship?

15:19 - At this stage in your business, what aspects are easier now compared to when you started?

17:05 - What are the ingredients of a successful entrepreneur?

19:01 - If you could send a letter to your younger self, what advice would you give? 

21:38 - What did you find difficult when you ventured into entrepreneurship? 

For Episode 249 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Alex Dow, the co-founder and chief innovation officer over at Mirai Security out in Vancouver, B.C. Mirai Security is a cybersecurity company that focuses on developing solutions for small, medium, and large enterprises, particularly those that are digitally enabled and may face compliance or customer-driven requirements for enhanced security. This episode delves into cybersecurity challenges faced by businesses, discussing common attacks like business email compromise and ransomware. It explores the need for effective training and awareness among employees to combat sophisticated threats as well as the motivation behind starting a cybersecurity company that aims to offer a comprehensive people-process-technology solution, filling the gap between expensive consultancies and software vendors.

00:00 - Intro

01:01 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

04:21 - What problem does your company solve in 60 seconds?

06:57 - What are the most common cyber attacks that are occurring?

09:38 - Are businesses facing potential bankruptcy due to the massive financial losses and damages caused by these attacks?

14:42 - What danger does AI pose in terms of cyber security?

20:13 - What motivated you to start a business?

33:57 - How do you maintain the core structure of your business?

For Episode 248 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Josh Furstoss, the CEO and co-founder of Incued. Induced aims to provide real-time financial data on private market assets to venture capital firms, private equity firms, investment banks, lenders, etc. This allows them to understand the performance, revenue, spending, and more of the portfolio companies they're involved with. Currently, traditional methods like Excel documents and PDFs lead to static, potentially fraudulent, and low-quality data, increasing investment and loan risk. The long-term goal is to create a Bloomberg terminal for the private markets, enhancing liquidity and driving market efficiency and innovation.

00:00 - Intro

00:49 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?

05:57 - What problem does your company solve in 60 seconds?

11:06 - What was your inspiration for starting this company?

15:13 - Describe your mentorship and how it gives back to your community.

19:56 - At what stage should you heavily invest in assembling the right people for your advisory board?

24:12 - What advice would you write to your younger self in a letter?

36:17 - How to balance feedback from a small subset of potentially self-serving target audience members while finding a product-market fit in the early days of your business?

For Episode 247 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Thomas Deneve, the founder and CEO of RentFund. RentFund turns rent payments into an investment and incentivizes people to take better care of the places where they live. The mission at RentFund is pretty simple: they believe that everyone should benefit financially from the place they live because, oftentimes, that's our biggest monthly expense. Essentially, a portion of each rent payment a renter makes gets put into an investment fund that will be returned to the renter upon the end of their lease, as long as the property is in good, undamaged condition.

00:00 - Intro

01:16 - What are the three things that you think every entrepreneur needs to know?

05:00 - Tell us a little bit about RentFund.

12:52 - Can you speak to the marketing aspect of RentFund? How do landlords market their property on your site?

17:13 - From the time you came up with this idea to the time you launched, what are some of the challenges that you’ve had to overcome?

24:23 - Can you explain how you’re playing both sides of the market with RentFund? What is your business model?

27:43 - What is going to be the biggest hurdle you’ll have to overcome to get to the next stage of growth?

33:11 - What is the best way for our listeners to connect with you?

For Episode 246 of Amplify Your Business, we’re in conversation with Christian Solomine, founder and CEO of Fractional CRO. What is a fractional CRO? A fractional CRO is an executive team member responsible for marketing, sales, business development, and customer success, essentially overseeing all revenue-generating aspects of a business. The key distinction is that they perform the same responsibilities as a full-time Chief Revenue Officer, but with a designated number of hours or days per week. In an effort to help companies that either don’t need a full time CRO, or are unsure which duties to assign to a person in this role, Christian began Fractional CRO to organizations to shape this role to be effective from day one.

00:00 - Intro

00:51 - What is a CRO? 

07:08 - What patterns have you noticed from your diverse interactions with different businesses?

13:42 - Does your role have system-based implementation strategies?

16:22 - Can some tools be more of a distraction than a help for certain businesses?

19:02 - Do you have stories from some of your more memorable engagements? 

20:36 -  If any of our audience members wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

For Episode 245 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Charlie Aldis, the co-founder and CRO of Maven IT. Charlie started in the telecom industry at just 18 years old, and by 30, had worked his way up to the executive level. However, frustration, anger, and stress caused his blood pressure to skyrocket, and he ended up having a stroke at work one day. It was then, after more than 30 years in the telecom industry, that Charlie realized he needed a change. So he hooked up with an old colleague, Aaron, and together, they founded Maven IT. Maven IT got its start with the aim of providing enterprise-level managed IT services to small and medium businesses. After a chance phone call to the franchisee of a Smoothie King opening up new stores in Michigan, Charlie and his co-founder Aaron realized that franchises were a very underserved market in terms of managed IT services. And so, eventually, Maven IT evolved from serving primarily small to medium businesses to operating in the franchisee space. To date, they’re in 32 states servicing about 1100 franchise locations nationwide and growing.

00:00 - Intro

01:03 - What are three things that you think every entrepreneur should know?

02:58 - Can you tell us a little bit about Maven IT? What is it you do, and how has the business evolved since you first started?

08:55 - Why did you leave your job, in an industry you were in for more than 30 years, to get into entrepreneurship with Maven IT?

15:31 - Where does your entrepreneurial drive come from? 

22:19 - What have you found most challenging or frustrating about pivoting from the telecom world into entrepreneurship?

29:55 - What does success look like to you now?

35:44 - If you could write a letter to your younger self, what advice would you give?

38:48 - If our audience members wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?